1 Week no updates...fail

Well have to admit overall I've kind of face planted in terms of keeping this updated. I partly blame myself in a combination of not really keeping up with it due to studying (still not going too great) , silly game addictions and keeping up with friends as a whole. In either case not a whole has happen to be honest. There's a couple of game reviews I want to get posted as I recently tried out Civ 5 Demo, Minecraft, Puzzle Quest 2 and several other games. Think that's about it for the moment not a whole lot is happen today. The last 3 days have been super busy as I'm trying to finish up some documentation that should have been done last week when I couldn't take screenshots for. That's a whole other problem though. Definitely looking forward to weeks more than I use to which I wish wasn't the case. Job wise nothing has popped up, more calls but that's about it no follow-up interviews...something's better than nothing. Nothing else really on mind at the moment listening to 'hastune miku head exercises' so any concerns I have are out the window. Will get back to update regularly starting today :).

Keeping the Blog going

After this mornings fit of madness I definitely gotta use this space in a somewhat constructive manner. First though I'd like to cover yesterday.

Work wise yesterday wasn't too bad, pretty much listen to Harry Potter and studied some A+. Recently the application I use to perform all my work crapped out so I'm left trying to think of every means to get the typically day to day work done with the assistance of co-workers, fun stuff. After work came back home played around on the Warcraft PTRs then Tyler came over for some Mario Tennis and we got stomped on for several hours. Didn't really hit the bed till 3ish though helped out John with configuring some Warcraft macros. As interesting as the PTR is currently I really can't see myself getting back into it. Just doesn't excite me like it use to. The new is interesting sure but the actually game kind of meh about it. Sort of like how some people play Starcraft and follow it like a real sport but don't really play it. More fun to watch then do kind of like a toddler on a run away go-kart.

So woke up this morning and seeing how I've had 8 hours of sleep or so in the past 2 days figured it best to work from home today. Definitely glad I did. Was inquired by my manager what my workload looked like for the day (yay redundancy...to clarify she asked me the same question today as yesterday...notes people take them if you can't remember!) , had a requester come back about the information they requested, and another phone call with a decline. The whole resume process reminds me of the whole situation where you ask a girl out and they just say they want to be friends. Unfortunately I never went through that so having people call me then take a poop on me is kind of a bummer. Grab a cup of coffee and decline a resume, that'll boost my spirits. Have to admit though its given me some insight as to what people are looking for, primarily certifications. As a result I'm probably going to spend more of my time locked in my room reading as this endless cycle of silly really needs to come to an end.

So pretty much at this point I have to make some choices. I'm reminded of that shirt that has 3 pictures and it says 'choose 2' one is a guy sleep, another is a guy playing a game, and the last one is a guy socializing with some friends. Its something like that and I can't recall exactly what it was. In either trying to manage a social life, keeping up with the latest gaming trends, studying along with work with the stress of work is starting to press my patience to a thin point. That on top of the guy that called me this morning in regards to my resume pretty much said flat out "I would get those certifications as soon as possible, it'll definitely make you more viable in the market" in a paraphrased sense. That in a way was kind of an eye opener because basically within the last 2 months I've been told that 2 times which is more than enough for me to actually push myself a bit harder with it.

Think I'm done for now thoughts are a bit cluttered but don't want to type out everything as it may take more time then I have allowed. Will probably provide an update tonight with my feedback when my mentality is a bit less hostile / volatile.

Needs to be a bit more diligent

For starters I was doing an 'ok' job keeping this updated but unfortunately I've fallen fairly behind in keeping this up. So for this week I'll be giving my best effort to update this on a daily basis.

Overall thought not a whole lot has happen sense the previous update on last Wednesday. Thursday I went into the office to work and there was a gas car explosion about 6 cars down from my car. I did depart the office a bit earlier than usually and the rest of the evening twas pretty straight forward. Friday I worked from home and it was a fairly slow day, spent Friday evening hanging out with some of Mina's friends along with Dean and Scott. Didn't get back till way late where basically chatted with Andy into the late hours of the morning. Definitely a good time was had and honestly can't remember most of it, think most of it was college talk, finding random things on the internet, how to kill boredom that sort of thing.

Saturday was probably the laziest day of them all. Spent most of it sitting around letting UFC play in the background while the gaming was a mixture of HoN, Puzzle Quest 2 and at some painful hour in the morning Warcraft PTR 4.0.1 beta. For once I'm not all that excited for it, I'll probably wait a few patch cycles before I come back if I choose to do so. Still in the air at the moment. There was a tiny bit Saturday of work but not a lot got done. Ran the QTP scripts and encountered one random blue screen. Lastly Sunday mostly HoN (been playing a lot recently, will probably take a break in the future) and small bit of Puzzle Quest.

Prospects for this week:
***More reading A+ book.
***Cleaning around the house as this is a bit over due.
***Play around with WoW 4.0.1 PTR.
***Make some progress in Puzzle Quest.
***Regular running session?

That's about it for now time to try to stay awake today and maybe go to bed early. Later

Labor Day Weekend Goodness

Welling seeing how there's not much I can get done today (Job runs can't be run due to some coding change, can't query accounts because a team member locked out TA Web, and unable to update documentation as the main tool I use crashes whenever it loads...good times). Though this is for today and not relating to the weekend. So lets fast forward to the weekend shall we?

Friday:

This day I have to admit was pretty good start for the lazy weekend ahead. Left the office early around 12:30-1ish to attend to some work and signed off around 5ish. Spent the remainder of the day playing Titan's Quest and Plants vs. Zombies for the most part with a small hint of HoN toward the end. Originally I thought some randomness would be going down but that was not the cause as there seemed to be a communication break down in a couple of areas. Also to be honestly don't recall doing much more than that lol. I believe this was the day I went up to bed early to read my A+ book, listen to some Harry Potter book 2, and a little bit of Ferry Corsten...that was about it.

Saturday:

Was definitely a bit more productive, ended up finishing Titan Quest on Normal with my Brigand, finished Plants vs. Zombies first time through and completed the Recettear demo. That ate up a good portion of the day. That along with Star Wars Ep 1-3 was being played all day so I took the time to do that. Played a couple of matches of HoN before heading off to bed at a reasonable time. This was also the evening I watched another program on Marine Reserve Ops or something like that. Crazy stuff

Sunday:

Played HoN the entire day with about 2 loses over 10 games. Watched more Star Wars...that was about it.

Monday:

Woke up and found myself at about 177 lbs. which I have to admit I was quite excited about the prospects of getting back to 170 lbs. seems a bit more tempting to aim for. Given I was about up to 179 at the end of the day (and hovered back to 177 lbs as of this morning/Tuesday). None the less woke up fairly early and made my way up (down?) to Colonial Heights to Laser Tag as I heard they had many rhythm based games up there. The stories I heard were quite accurate. Given that yes it was a 30 minute drive it wasn't too shabby. ITG3 (modded stepmania), PIU, Pop N Music, Beatmania (found out I could play normal 7 key?) and Taiko Drum master. It was pretty insane. My only gief was the front counter not having the ability to break a $20 2 hours after opening. Had to venture to a BP to get the change. Spent about 2.5 hours there and drove back.

For the remainder of the day it was a combination of watching Star Wars Ep 4-6, trucking my Brigand further through Epic mode (might reach Act 2 tonight), played a handful of HoN matches (after this weekend might take a break for a bit lol), and made a tiny bit more progress in Plants vs. Zombies. Did end up seeing the 'Furry' episode of CSI which I found to be somewhat amusing. Believe that's about it.

Week ahead:

Definitely looking forward to the short work week with no real plans couple of objectives though.

*Planning to drop down to 175 or less by the end of this week. Should be plausible as I've made a commitment to myself which entails of if I obtain any food outside a grocery store I'll be consuming it on the way and not at home. This mainly applies to pizza as that's a main gainer there. On top of this I'll be working out an hour each day. That and trying to stick with sub 1k calories.
*Read a chapter of A+ each day this week. Hopefully get to chapter 10 when its all said and done.
*Planning to be upstairs by 11ish. No staying up silly late (I always break this why do I try :p).
*Need a new pair of headphones (1,000 times this).
*Discipline

Think that's about it for now. Going to get back to updating this on a regular basis as I have trouble recalling things from 3-4 days back. Not sure if its a good or a bad thing but meh whatever.

Later all.

Review: Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale - Demo

Alright so after about 3.1 hours of play and completing the demo I figured that a review on this wonderful game was definitely needed necessary. So here go.

[b]Ovewview[/b]

For starters I'm not going to give a review of the story as that's said in the demo and it would spoil it just a tiny bit. Not huge spoilers but I'll give a premise as to what's going on. For starters you begin as a character known as Recette (sp?) where your partner Tear (a Fairy) are responsible for running a shop and generating a profit. To go about doing this you higher an adventurer (which you control) who goes into a dungeons killing monters, hunting for treasures, and escaping alive (sometimes this is a biggie). After the dungeons are complete you place the found items into the shop to sell the town folk and other adventures by bartering and getting the best price possible. There's also a duel leveling system one for your adventure and one for your merchant level that gains you more access to the game. This is a fairly high level of the game sense I mentioned earlier no spoilers.

[b]Enjoyed...[/b]

*Multi-style based play - While 'adventuring' the game plays like a sort of dungeon crawlers similar to Diablo, Torchlight, Chocobo Dungeon...you get the idea. So it has the element of wondering around finding cool stuff and trying to escape alive.

*Shop/Barter System - This was neat as well as the whole game didn't revolve around crawling about and then selling all your stuff to the vendor. The game actually discourages selling items to the vendor and prompts you to sell items to the townsfolk. Fairly neat system.

*3 hours of play from an psuedo-RPG - I honestly can't complain and don't need to elaborate too much beyond that point.

*The humor - not much else to say here, there's just some parts where I honestly just bursted out laughing.

[b]Not so keen on[/b]

*Delayed explanations - There are peroids of time where you go to perform action a. and then its explained later if its a good or bad idea. Wish they gave come clarification as to some concepts sooner.

*Initially price - $20 bucks for most indie games are not my cup of tea. Its a great game but the price make me iffy if I want to initially grab it.

*Slow start up - For those who don't enjoy much story and really just want to jump into the game. Either you'll have to bare with it or find something different to play. For at least the 1st hour is just plot with a tiny explanation of game play...that's about it. Once you break that threshold though it picks up quickly.

[b]Wrap-up[/b]

That's about it for the game as a whole. Pretty good and I may pick up before release though not quite decided on it as of yet. In either case will wait and see...my work here is done later all.

Its been a Cat & Mouse week (Chu Chu Rocket song)

Have to admit the past 3 days have been a bit crazy/hectic/fun I must admit. Overall its been filled with a good bit of traveling, good fun, and many random activities. Definitely looking forward to the weekend. Once again as a result of work I've completely forgotten that the weekend ahead is an extended weekend so that may fluctuate my plans a little bit. May do something a bit outside the norm in terms of typically expected. Well without further I'll go through each day of the week.

Tuesday:

Come Tuesday morning (partly as a result of Monday evening...Mario Tennis, good times). I decided that after the work day to head over to a friends place to help them fix there PC issues. Recently they started to play a game called Titan's Quest and were unable to exercise the LAN feature. Once 5 o'clock rolled around I made my way over there and resolved the issue. In terms of troubleshooting it seemed they were going in the right directions and checking the correct screens. Though one element I forgot to factor in for was prioritizing Hamachi on the connection. Once that was set they were able to join and play with great ease. After the PC issue was resolved I accepted a payment of playing one round involving "Risk:Reinvented" got stomped (I blame Putin...)but definitely like how the game encourages a bit more aggression as compared to the original version which seems to result in many stalemates.

The evening however didn't end there. Between these intervals I kept in contact with another individual who I would be going bowling with later that evening. Our first game was pretty bad but we both scored around the 100-120 range. For myself the best round of the evening was when I 148, best game so far. The rest of the games were ok, not great and not too bad. Unfortunately the bowling buddy couldn't get the turkey he wanted but we were both definitely glad to get a few overdue rounds in. He also hinted on a new rhythm based set-up (that I also heard from random person at putt-putt) that was now running in Colonial Heights. I'll need to take a trip there in the near future. When we finished bowling I dropped'em back off at home and drove back.

Wednesday:

This one was another fun day. Woke up and a couple hours into the work day and via discussion through facebook was grated another opportunity to assist someone. Recently their engine light had been turning on and need it checked out. So after the seemingly slow work day (glad it was slow today) meet'em over at the car place and drove down to Micheal's to pick up some supplies. For board game and tabletop purposes I wanted to have a few extra bags on hand to store pieces and simplify a few things. Was getting a bit tired of opening up a box of catan and seeing the chit spread all over the place whenever I opened the box. Not to mention that sense I purchased the new risk game and the only way the pieces were separated were by dividers along with Quelf cards could use some sort of repackaging method...well you get the idea. So as a result we browsed the store, observed random objectives, bought our respective supplies and departed from the store.

After this we went over to IHOP to grab dinner. Nothing spectacular happen here except for consuming food...unless you thinking eating food in a restaurant is awesome or out the norm. Or find it odd that someone would go to there after filling up the back of there car with food, but that's about it. The Chauffeur stylings of Tonberry continued as the next stop was Target to pick up some pet food. They didn't have the exact type needed but there was a substitute that may do the trick. This conclude the travel portion of the trip which the last bit consisted of general conversation. I was a bit stuck and tucked into my chair for a bit as I must admit I still find the individual I chilled with attractive so I was only able to converse until bloodflow was only working towards one part of my body. Which at this point i departed drove back home took care of a few things and went off to bed.

[b]Thursday:[/b]

Another fairly busy day (and another reason how his putting his friends first and study second...catch-up this week, god knows). For this day I decided to work from home sense there was the anticipation of having another friend come visit and assist him with building his computer. He had never put in a process before and was freaking out about bent pins, putting it in the wrong way, misalignment, collateral self implodedment (made up word!) of the universe and extratransversal (another word made up of other words!) reverse of the timeline paradox. So pretty much my day consist of more waiting and troubleshooting a few issues. At one point he arrived we unloaded his car and tied a few lose ends and we started work. There was a brief period in which I play a demo of a game on steam but I'll put that in its own post.

This next section just involves the assembly of the computer. It maybe interesting/boring for some so you can choose to skip it or just read ahead. Without further a due.

To began I would like to thank the individual who bought the computer to allow myself another friend help assemble it. For myself it definitely expanded my mindset as to how top of the line motherboards for intel are designed. First to note the last time I had built a computer was about 2 years ago and it wasn't anything complicated. This was definitely a fun experience. Admittedly the process installation was the most enjoyable and painfully. We definitely encountered a few issues. For example when we removed the PnP cap from the top of the process two of the pieces broke off and we had to fetch them from underneath the CPU claps was not fun but my dad did provide a small array of tools to help us :). Next was the heat sink. Another great reaction from the fellow who hadn't seen one up close.

After a couple handful of "That's what she said jokes" and realizing that we need to unscrew the mobo from the case again we were able to apply thermal paste on the CPU with Heat Sink on top. Another +1 on the amusement meter was his amazement at how simple it really was to install a processor unit. Though it must be noted that if ya screw it up that's no fun. The last hic-up we encounter were the screws falling out the motherboard but this was quickly remedied. Dean did an excellent job with the wiring and the few hours worked payed off as our friend stood completely mesmerized (and soon to be brother's bench pressing tool) of new computer. It shuts down in about 3 seconds which is a bit absurd but he seemed quite please as there was constant thanks.

For dinner we all went to IHOP (after 2 trips I'm haven't gone above 180 so confused) ordered some food. Somehow Ali (friend with new computer, bit tired of typing in the vague) got yellow stuff in his Chocolate Milk that looked like eggs. That's about it though. We went back played a round of Catan as he sat absorbed by his new machine. Evening concluded shortly after that with watching some HHDDVVDDBVD and bleep bloop related videos. Have to say I slept well that night.

Today and Ongoing

Should be an interesting day going forward, there's plans tonight but no idea exactly what's going down. So will wait and see chillage of some sort and maybe a nap as I would mind a tiny recharge. That's about it this weeks been a blast and definitely enjoy hanging out with all you guys. Thinking about booking out of work early so I can run the scripts in a timely manner and perhaps finish that Reccetear demo. That's about all. La ta everyone.

Well Over due on a Blog Post

I'll be providing an update in the near future...in the mean enjoy this youtube channel with a lot of Acceleration Suguri Music. Just search "Suguri" in the channel.